As anticipated, this train has ended up with the lowest occupancy amongst all VB. This route needs a intercity more than a VB. Hope railways corrects this . I am sure they would not allow running of this train if this continues to be the trend. Occupancy of only 36%. Even Mumbai-MAO VB occupancy is also low.
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If you take KGQ TVC as the yardstick, everything will look low.

There's hardly 5% end to end travellers for the KGQ TVC VBs. The inflated occupancy percentages are due to same seats being booked in multiple sectors. Like CAN-TCR and TCR-TVC or KGQ-CLT, CLT-ERS and ERS-TVC = 300% occupancy for a single seat. This method of comparison is flawed. Mumbai Madgaon has 100% occupancy almost always.

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The yardstick is same for all sectors. Maybe Mumbai -Madgaon is not having passengers even though intermediate hence mentioned as low occupancy. I dont think any VB have great occupancy end to end except maybe that run in North India. Same goes for Chennai-Tirunelveli, Mys-MAS as well. Whatever mentioned are names of trains and not occupancy for end to end. Maybe a boarding-deboarding data might give a better picture. Also Mumbai-Madgaon sectors have other trains which take almost similar travel time with lesser price so passengers have lots of other options as well

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You're not getting the point. 80% of the passengers for the CSMT MAO VB are end to end; from Mumbai area to Goa and some to Ratnagiri/Kankavali. Whereas for the KGQ TVC VB, less than 5% are end to end travellers. People book for short 2-3 hour hops from Kasaragod to Kozhikode or Kozhikode to Ernakulam or Thrisshur to Trivandrum. Thus the same seat will be booked multiple times on a trip, inflating occupancy numbers. This looks good on paper since insane occupancy percentages like 190% can be achieved, that's all. Regarding your claim that Mumbai Madgaon doesn't have enough patronage, have a look at the availability post first charting on IRCTC and see for yourself.

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